About Patrick D. Thornton, CNM, MSN

Patrick Thornton began his career in the helping professions in the 1970's working in a drug crisis center, a halfway house for alcoholics, shelter for teen runaways, and battered women's shelter. He became interested in midwifery with the births of his own two daughters in the 1980's. Both were born at home with midwives in attendance.

Patrick graduated from The University of Akron in 1988 cum laude with a B.S. in nursing. He then worked in several hospitals as a labor and delivery nurse. Convinced of the need for alternatives to the medical approach to pregnancy and birth, Patrick enrolled in the Frontier School of Midwifery and Family Nursing in 1992. "I spent a long time debating whether the world needed more men delivering babies, but kept seeing women OB/GYNs handling birth about the same as men. I realized it's the disease orientation of medical training that results in treating birth as an illness."

Patrick graduated from Frontier in 1994 after completing a preceptorship at BirthPlace in Pittsburgh. He worked in both a hospital and a birth center in West Virginia before joining the Pittsburgh practice of Dr. Christine Tyndall in 1999. He received his Master of Science in Nursing from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland that same year, as well as opening the only midwife owned practice in the Pittsburgh Pennsylvania region.

Patrick Thornton's professional CV is availiable at PatrickThornton.info.